Jacquie just let me know that the newsletter I posted for this week needed updating, but the internet was giving her problems, so I’ve deleted this week’s online letter – you’ll be getting a hard copy at your pickup today instead.
Next week I’ll be out of town, so unable to post the newsletter, so Jacquie will be providing hard copy next week also.
Sorry for any confusion!
Posted in Newsletter
Dear Friends of the Farm!
Produce: This week you will be getting Yukon Gold potatoes, sweet white onions, summer squash, banana peppers, jalapeno peppers, bell peppers, green beans, corn, a purple prudence or Golden Globe tomato and your regular tomatoes, orange honeydew and one of the three varieties of watermelon.
Listeria: (as found on the internet) is a bacterium containing six species. It is commonly found in soil, stream water (and ditch water), on plants and in food. Although it has low infectivity, it is hardy and can grow in temperatures ranging from 40 degrees (your refrigerator temperature) to 98.6 (your body temperature). Listeria can be found in uncooked meats, uncooked vegetables, unpasteurized dairy products and processed foods. Pasteurization and cooking kills the bacteria. Thoroughly scrubbing your produce & cutting surfaces and drying them off with a paper towels are recommended. This bacterium is normally targeted by a healthy immune system before it can cause an infection. But it can be dangerous for the elderly (anyone over the age of 60), pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems.
2012: We registered several members for 2012 renewals at the Festival. If you didn’t get a chance to tell us you are interested in renewing your membership, please call or email to let me know. There is no obligation until you pay your fees! (I will not respond to your calls or emails!) Statements will go out in January for your 2012 Membership & Produce Fees. The biggest advantage of doing this now ~ no paperwork later!
Festival: We had the best weekend! 498 members along with 24 guests arrived with big smiles to enjoy a day on the farm! Kids enjoyed knocking down the yowling cats off the fence, knocking down milk bottles, playing Frisbee golf and running their steeds in the horse races. Adults & kids had fun exploring the farm, picking out their pumpkins, hayrides, eating great food and picking vegetables. The main event this year was the mules. Jerry Sr. used to farm with horses back in the 30’s. To celebrate our 75th anniversary, we had two teams of Belgium mules pulling a disk and a harrow. Members got to see how these animals did the “hard work” back in the day. Oh boy were these guys big! The best part of the day for me was to see Jerry’s Dad’s face when he saw those animals; we were all crying!
Contest Winners: Several entries were made in both the pickle/relish and jam/jelly divisions. Next year we will separate the relishes from the pickles. Jennifer Loper won first prize for her relish and Nicole Hines won first price & over-all best jelly. Each winner will get $25! We need to recognize Jamie Yeast for his fantastic
t-shirt design. On the front mentions Monroe Organic Farms, llc./2011 and on the back shows beet roots with the caption, “rooted in Colorado for 75 years”. Jamie will get $50 for this awesome t-shirt design for our special 19th Harvest Festival!
Thank you! We had a great big crew to help us get everything set up. Tents, tables and chairs went up in a flash! Thank you to the ladies who did all the chopping of the vegetables. All of you did a fabulous job and I loved the fact I didn’t feel you needed any supervision! Myrna (my mother) wanted to tell Robert Hartmen, Carmen Waldman and Tracy Yamashita how much she liked working with you. She said all of you had a great sense of hummer and really made the day fun for her. Thank you to everyone else who volunteered. We couldn’t do any of this without you! It was really nice that people pitched in even though they hadn’t volunteered for anything! “Extra hands make light work”, my grandmother would always say! Our cleanup crew was small, but efficient! I guess everyone wanted to see the Broncos play because we started to shut down the place at 3 o’clock. Chili roasting went on for a couple more hours, but everybody was fine with that! We just sat around and had a great conversation!
Freeze Warning: I can’t believe I am saying this, but it will freeze before we know it! We need volunteers! If you are available to come to the farm and pick vegetables at the last minute, please get on our Freeze Warning List. We normally don’t get more than a two day notice that it may freeze. Call me with your name and phone number (please do not email me for this one; I won’t be able to check email for a couple more weeks!) We try to get as much as possible picked and put into shelters so that we can extend the season as far as possible. We can get a freeze here anytime after the 20th of September! For those of you looking for another opportunity to volunteer, we have one for you!
Thank you again to everyone who came to the Festival. We had a great time showing off your farm. We look forward to seeing you next year!
Jacquie, Jerry, Alaina and Kyle
Posted in Newsletter
What a great day for the Harvest Festival yesterday! I was fortunate to be asked to judge the canned foods and jams again this year – and we had a wonderful lineup of entries. The winners were:
Sweet
First Place – Spiced Red Wine Jelly
Second Place – Raspberry Jam
Third Place – Tomato Preserves
Savory
First Place – Sweet Pickle Relish
Second Place – Corn Relish
Third Place – Bread and Butter Pickles (labeled B&B on top)
If these were your entries, we would love if you would share your recipes for to be posted on the blog. If you know who made any of these, please get me their names and contact info.
Congratulations to the winners!
Posted in Food Storage & Preserving, Harvest Festival
The Harvest Festival promises to be a fun-filled day packed with activities. For those of you who signed up (reservations are closed at this time) and are attending, here’s what you can expect:
Be sure to check in first thing when you arrive – see the check in area near the tents – and parking will be on the north side, weather permitting.
Various games will be offered on the front lawn.
T-shirts, hats and cookbooks will be for sale – everything is $12 per item, cash or check only. All proceeds raised from these sales is used to provide shares to families in need, so be supportive!
The festival is a potluck – the farm will provide hotdogs and hamburgers along with drinks, but each family should plan on bringing a side dish or a dessert that will feed 8.
We are optimistic that we’ll have horses and mules performing demos of farm activities throughout the day.
The ever popular stick horse race for the kids begins at noon.
Once again we’ll have a jam and canning contest – all contestants need to have your entries to the judging stand by 1:00pm.
Hayrides will be offered throughout the day, and there should be enough pumpkins for everyone to get one.
Chile peppers are available for self picking throughout the day. Each family may have one tray roasted at the farm for $5 – please be patient as the line is sometimes long for this. Alternatively, you may easily roast them yourself at home on the grill.
The apple press will be running until everything is pressed – families are asked to bring a bag of apples if you’d like to participate.
We look forward to seeing everyone on Sunday!
Posted in Harvest Festival
If you didn’t get a winter share order form with your pickup this week, click here:
to get the form!
Posted in Farm Shares, Winter Shares
Peg Lehr is coordinating volunteers for the harvest festival and really needs grillers! She needs to add one to the earlier shift (12:00-1:30) and two to the later shift (1:30-3:00). If you can help, please contact Peg at wrdwrrior@comcast.net or by phone at 303-329-8506.
See you at the festival!
Posted in Harvest Festival
Hello Friends of the Farm!
Produce: This is week 12 out of an 18 week season. You will be getting Red Potatoes, Walla Walla Onions, golden or Chioggia beets, slicing cucumbers and lemon cucumbers, a mixture of summer squash, fennel, Edamame beans, banana peppers, jalapeno peppers, green and Ivory peppers (Ivory peppers are a very pale yellow) corn, a mixture of Roma, yellow and regular tomatoes, orange honeydew, Charleston Gray or Crimson Sweet watermelon and muskmelon. Guess what everyone? The melons are all coming on at the same time – so you will be getting a lot of melons for the next couple of weeks! Edamame beans are an edible soybean and are best rapidly boiled in heavily salted water for 7 to 9 minutes. Cool slightly before eating. Just slide between teeth or shell and use in soups or a mixed veggie dish.
Well, after weeks of extremely hot weather, it has cooled off. This is wonderful for the human body, but it will slow down the maturity of crops. The perfect temperatures for tomato ripening are day-time temps below 95 and night-time temps above 65. Anytime we do not stay within those parameters, tomatoes will just sit there and wait until it gets warm enough or cool enough for them to ripen. With that in mind, we have a huge field out there waiting to be picked. They are the biggest, green tomatoes wanting desperately to be red! I feel this will still happen sometime this month. If you want to be put on the “Wail List” for tomato and pepper picking, please call me with your phone number and let me know if you can come on Sunday during the day or Tuesday/Thursday evenings or all of the above!
Festival: This is the last week to RSVP for the Harvest Festival. We will not take late RSVP’s after the 10th of September. It is mandatory to RSVP before showing up at the Festival. Here is Peg’s info again: 303-329-8506 or wrdwrrior@comcast.net. Peg is also scheduling volunteers. Directions to the farm are attached!
Don’t forget the Harvest Festival is a Potluck. Please bring a side dish or dessert that is at least double what you would normally fix for a family of four. We will be grilling hamburgers/hotdogs and will provide the drinks, cups, plates & utensils. The Festival starts at 11a.m. and we will be asking everyone around at 4 o’clock to help clean up. With lots of help, it normally has not taken more than 45 minutes to an hour!
Always bring extra clothes for children and shoes you do not worry about getting dirty. Expect mud somewhere on the farm. We continually water and you never know when it may rain. Be Prepared! We are an organic farm, so please expect weeds everywhere you go. Especially this year, considering all the rain we had last spring.
Winter Share: Attached you will find a Winter Share Form. It is time for us to start planning for the Winter. Depending on how many people sign up for the Winter Share; tells us how much produce we need to store. At this time you will need to order your spring and/or fall animals for 2012. Please fill out and send back by October 1st with your check for the non-refundable deposits. [NOTE: The form wasn’t attached to post here – you should get it from your distribution center when you pickup or call Jacquie.]
2012: Jerry and I have finally hit that point where we cannot continue at this pace any longer. We are considering getting a little smaller next year. We are curious to know who would be willing to give us a verbal agreement to renewing their memberships for 2012 in September/October and be billed in January for the same order as 2011 (though prices may change). Changes to your order can be made by phone in January after you receive your bill and we will fill out a 2012 Change Order Sheet. Down payments will need to be made by February 15th and you may cancel your entire order by that same date. If you do not plan on attending the Harvest Festival, please call me at the above number. We are trying to see how many shareholders are committed and where we stand on numbers. We will then decide if Distribution Centers will need to be closed, whether or not our routes will need to be changed and if we are going to continue to deliver Tue, Wed, and Thr. or just on Tue. and Thr. We have had 19 years of wonderful supportive members and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Ever since Jerry and I have met, we have been in the business of educating people about organics and building our business. We are the oldest organic farm in the state; we either helped start or attended the oldest farmers markets in the state and we are one of three of the oldest CSA’s in the state. We have done nothing else but educate and build for 27 years. But for our health, we need to make our lives a little simpler! Many of you have watched our children grow, our farm change and all of us mature into who we are today. Thank you for letting us know about your plans on being members next year.
Cooking Class: Our first cooking class was a success! Ten of us gathered for good food and wine. Wonderful ideas flowed not only from Mary Collette Rogers but from members too. This was an extremely enjoyable evening of friendship. Everyone cooked and everyone had fun. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend the evening! A special Thank you to Mary Collette & Everyday Good Eating for bringing us together.
Jacquie, Jerry, Kyle and Alaina
Directions to the Farm
From Denver, the Western Slope or Pueblo:
I-25 North to I-76 East. As you continue east, don’t panic, you will be driving for a while! Last town you will go through is Hudson. Very next exit is #34 or the Kersey Rd. Take this exit, turn left. Continue north for approximately 16 miles. Turn right at Co Rd 48. You are now on a dirt road. Travel 1 ½ miles. We are on the left or north side of road. Our name & house number (25525) is on the mailbox.
From Boulder, Longmont or Lyons:
I-25 North to highway 66. Take highway 66 east to highway 85. Highway 85 north through the towns of Platteville, then Gilcrest. At next grain elevator, Co Rd 44, turn right heading east. At Co Rd 49, turn left heading north. Travel 2 miles to Co Rd 48, turn right heading east. Another 1 ½ miles to the farm on left or north side of road. Our name & house number (25525) is on the mailbox.
From Loveland or Ft. Collins:
Take highway 34 east through the city of Greeley. Must take Fort Morgan exit to continue east on highway 34. Approximately 4 miles from this exit to Co Rd 49, turn right heading south. Travel 4 miles to Co Rd 48, turn left. 1 ½ miles to farm on the left or north side of road. Our name & house number (25525) is on the mailbox.
Posted in Newsletter
Canning and pickling season is here! While I was at the Monroe’s picking cucumbers, I asked some fellow members about sharing recipes… Pat Stark came to the rescue!
Claraice’s Bread & Butter Pickles
Claraice Sheffield, Manilla, Iowa (1935)
25-30 small to medium pickling cucumbers
8 large white onions
2 large sweet peppers (red or green)
1/2 Cup pickling salt
5 Cups cider vinegar
4 Cups sugar
2 Tbsp. mustard seed
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. turmeric
makes about 8 pints
Wash cukes and slice as thin as humanly possible. Chop (or grind) onions and peppers; combine with sliced cucumbers and salt. Let stand 3 hours. Drain.
Mix vinegar, sugar and spices in large kettle, bring to a boil. Add the drained cucumbers, peppers and onions. Heat thoroughly but DO NOT BOIL.
Seal in sterilized jars.
And… another of Pat’s family favorites…
“Oklahoma Chili Sauce”
Aneth Fulton, Alva, Oklahoma (1915)
24 large tomatoes
6 onions, chopped
2 green peppers
1 red pepper
1 bunch celery
1 quart white vinegar
1-1/2 Cups sugar
1 Tbsp of each: salt, ginger, cinnamon, ground cloves, dry mustard
makes 4 quarts
1) Peel and chop tomatoes.
2) Process peppers and celery.
3) Place all ingredients in large kettle.
4) Simmer for 3 hours.
5) Seal in sterilized jars. [Dept. of Ag. recommends boiling water bath.]
Pat’s notes: There is no chili in this recipe so it’s really a tomato relish. Grandma Fulton dunked the tomatoes in boiling water to split the skins for easy peeling. When cool, she cored and crushed the tomatoes by hand and processed the peppers and onions in her food grinder. While I still peel and crush the tomatoes by hand, I use a food processor for the peppers and onions and simmer everything overnight in a crock pot. The aroma will drive you crazy!
When to serve? It’s ready immediately. Great for breakfast or dinner. Grandpa would spoon a generous portion next to potatoes and eggs in the morning and Grandma always placed an open jar on the table to serve with beef or poultry.
Posted in Celery, Cucumbers, Food Storage & Preserving, Peppers, Recipes, Tomatoes
Tagged Canning and Preserving, Food, Recipes, U-Pick
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